Sādhana – Practice makes Perfect

Aum Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya

Haribol.

So tonight the talk is titled Sadhana – Practice Makes Perfect. A friend of mine in the UK sent me, just a couple of days ago, sent me a link to an article that was in the UK Daily Mail, and it was quite disturbing. So I thought I would read a little bit from it, and then you’ll understand where we’re going with things in a little while. So the headline of the article was,

An obsession with social media took Leanne Maskell, to the brink of suicide and, says the model and activist, it’s now destroying the mental health of an entire generation.

Kind of quite big claims, and quite disturbing claims. So I’ll just read a few paragraphs from the article.

Leanne Maskell was 24 and living in Australia when she began to plan her suicide.

No one knew or could have guessed because she seemed to have everything. Leanne – 5 ft 11in, a beguiling, pale blue-eyed blonde – had worked as a model for more than a decade (appearing in Vogue and I-D)

You know ID? It’s a magazine in the UK put out by Vice, and it’s all fashion and young people and everything.

“She worked as a model for more than a decade (appearing in Vogue and I-D), having started at 13 years old. She had graduated with a law degree [in England] in London, and then taken off to Bondi Beach. Her instagram page showed her modelling bikinis for big brands, partying on super yachts and traveling on private jets.

‘My life looked perfect,’ she says. ‘I had amazing opportunities, money, “beauty” – although I didn’t feel beautiful – but I was waking in the middle of the night crying, thinking, “Why am I still alive?”’ she says. ‘I thought I must have some serious mental health disorders and I remember googling them – bipolar, borderline personality disorder – and thinking, “I’ve got all of them.”’

After finding the perfect ‘suicide spot’ (for weeks, Leanne obsessively viewed its location on her phone) and setting a date to do it ([on] a Sunday), she decided to enjoy her last week alive. ‘I had one week left to live, so I should be able to eat what I wanted – it didn’t matter if I got fat.’

So I just make a point here. Further in the article she talks about all the pressures on young women to have a certain bodily identity to appear a certain way, and your value, your worthiness, acceptance is all tied to that image, and so she was constantly harassed by her agents and the people hiring her to lose weight. So she hardly ever ate, just to have that look. And then her phone was loaded with all kinds of filters so that every time she took a selfie it was heavily altered. She even did her own photoshopping just to look unrealistically slim and beautiful. So that was what was going on behind the scenes. So she thought I should be able to eat what I wanted since I was going to kill myself and it didn’t matter if I got fat.

‘I began each day with a chocolate almond croissant. I’d never have allowed myself that before,’ she says. ‘I stopped using my phone so much, and doing things to create “content”.’

I mean it’s categorized as content but it’s just trivial, shallow nonsense that brings no good to anybody, and it’s called “content.”

‘I remember going for a three-hour walk without my phone and just felt completely different afterwards.’

I mean that’s actually shocking for me being an old dude that somebody could be utterly relieved just not to have their phone for three hours. It changed them. That’s because they spend so much time on it.

‘I had a photoshoot, too, and it was incredible: for once, I wasn’t overthinking it or worrying about whether I was good enough. I just really enjoyed it. By the end of that week, I was thinking, “What the hell am I doing? It doesn’t make sense to kill myself.”’

It was the start of a long recovery

And so she went on to give up all those things that she was doing. She started an organisation and has been really working and advocating for the health, mental health and well-being, of young women and girls.

So you can see, just from her own statements, that she was seeking to achieve something, and that thing that she was seeking to achieve was beauty and fame, and of course, to be honoured by others, to appear desirable, either sexually desirable, or to be—people would want to be your friend, just because they think you’re full and complete, and you’re so cool, and you’re flying around the world, and you’ve got so much going on. If I can attach myself to you somehow perhaps my life will become more perfect. That’s the idea.

So there are very clear ideas of a goal that people set for themselves. Of course, the higher goal than those things, the fame and beauty and everything, is the idea of coming to a situation where I am actually happy, where I’m actually fulfilled. That’s what people are chasing. That’s what they’re aspiring for.

But of course, what she’s doing is utterly fake. In front of everybody else she’s posing as having this amazing life, and everybody is envying her, but yet she herself is waking up crying at night and wishing she was dead, that everything that she has to do to have that thing that everybody else thinks, wow! is so desirable, is killing her. I mean it’s sort of like, whoa! this is so—we’ve become, as a society, incredibly shallow, where we cannot even honestly admit to ourself what is the situation. This is disastrous, where people—

It’s kind of like the kid’s story of The Emperor Who Had No Clothes. He was being told by his tailor, who was running out of things to do, that he was dressed in the most beautiful garments, and everybody around him in the court was saying, “Oh yeah, it’s beautiful.” And he’d ask, “What do you think of what I’m wearing?” and, “Oh it’s amazing!” But actually the guy was naked. And when he goes out in the public one day everybody’s kind of like adoring him and going along with the illusion, until finally a kid goes, “The king’s got no clothes!” It took an innocent child to speak up, and then the whole thing fell apart.

That’s no different from what’s going on here but the—I mean she knows that the image that she’s posting is not real. She’s been heavily editing it on photoshop or using all these filters and everything to make it look unrealistically beautiful, but she knows that’s fake. And so you have this insecurity, even when you’re posting all this stuff. And then she’s watching how many likes she gets for every photo that gets posted. And if the number of likes goes down she’s just totally in anxiety, and thinking, planning, “What do I have to do next? I gotta post something else later today or tomorrow that will have the likes that I was always getting before.” And you just live in this really superficial and shallow world that you know is fake. And everybody else is thinking, “Oh, it’s all wonderful.”

So in Sanskrit there are two words that cover the subject. One is sadhya. Sadhya means a goal, something that people are aiming for and sadhana is the process, what you’re doing to attain that goal. So it’s kind of like, okay, well what’s that got to do with what I’ve been reading and that story? Well these terms, the situation applies to everyone. All of you, all of us, everyone, we are setting goals, and we’re figuring out, “What do I need to do to attain this goal?” And so in everybody’s life, you’re already engaged in some form of sadhana.

The word sadhana actually, as with all Sanskrit words, pretty much, has multiple meanings, depending upon how it’s used, but they pretty much capture the essence of what we’re talking about. In the dictionary, the words that they used to explain sadhana is, “leading straight to a goal.” Sadhana is that which leads straight to a goal. It also means, “furthering,” you know, advancing an ideal or a philosophy or something that you’re doing in life. It also means, “the act of mastering something.” This is sadhana. And, “bringing about a completion,” you know, reaching that end state that you’re after, to, “preparing something, or making it ready.” All of these are different meanings

But our spiritual teachers generally use the word sadhana to mean “the means by which we can achieve the goal of life.” So that’s the heavy part tacked on the end, “the goal of life.”

This girl had a goal. She’d been in la la land since she was 13, when she was spotted and recruited for some fashion shoot at 13 years of age. And then since that time she was heavily groomed to perform this role of a beautiful glamorous model. And there was heavy payout, I mean all this money, all this fame and adulation, tripping around the world doing all these things that common people can’t do, But the thing was at what cost? Was that payout worth the price?

The word sadhana, actually in the deepest sense, speaks to the process of cultivating a spiritual life, and it speaks to the importance of having a regular, or regulated, practice.

The first thing though, is really and clearly, what’s clearly needed, is what is my goal in life? What is my goal? What is that which is most important for me. And for me to judge that, I could ask you, “What makes you cry?” [Laughs] “What makes you cry? What makes you fearful? What makes you really upset?” You will find that those things are very much connected to what you find most important in life. So what is that goal?

The goal of spiritual life was the realization of my actual spiritual identity. And when we take that one all the way to the end, it’s not just about the recognition of my spiritual being, but the fact that I have a limitless and eternal longing to reconnect with my soul mate, that eternal spiritual personality to whom I am bound by an eternal bond of kinship. We’ve spoken about many, many times before.

So if we want to—you know, everybody is serious about their sadhana. If I want to look incredibly beaut—I mean the things people go through now are mind-boggling. The amount of money that’s spent on cosmetic surgery is astonishing. The number of, both men and women, whose body is filled with plastic implants, it’s astonishing. I mean people get them in their calf muscles. You’ve got all these pretty boys who want to look like they’ve got sculpted bodies, and their abs are made of plastic. They’re implants! And they’re taking all of these things to thin the skin, and they’re on these diets, so that they don’t have much fat layer. And their biceps are implants! I mean we thought it was ridiculous with women doing with their boobies, and then their—the butt became the big focus. And some of these people spend like 150, 250 thousand dollars, over 10 years or so, on all this body modification. They have a very clear idea about the goal, and they are very focused in their sadhana, the process that will bring them to their goal.

It’s not very often that people can think so clearly about what it is that I actually need to become happy. The need for happiness is huge. It’s such a big deal It’s such a big focus. It’s driving everybody. But when we are lost in this illusion of the body as being the self, then our thoughts and our plans for what will bring us happiness, of course, is all temporary and illusory.

So when the yogi understood what was their sadhya, what was the goal that they were seeking, finding the right process was not so difficult. They always sought out somebody who was a master at their craft, the craft of spiritual cultivation; and approaching such a master with great humility, they begged from them, “Please share with me what it is that I need to do in order to attain this goal.”

The practice, this sadhana, clearly does two things. One is, it actually begins to move a person forward towards that goal, and in the process of doing that one develops increased enthusiasm, and that increased enthusiasm comes from experiencing the practical result of applying yourself in this process.

So I’m just going to read a few verses from the Yoga Sutra. The reason I’m going to read these is because in this work the author, Patanjali, is setting forward what is the sadhana, what is the process to attain the highest goal, according to the system that he was following. This system is sometimes referred to as the mystic yoga process, or the ashtanga yoga process, and was very demanding, but I’m only reading it out, not to promote that we need to do all of these things in the way that they were done, but just to establish what was the standard.

I mean we’ve entered this time where it’s like, oh my gods! [hand to forehead] everybody’s got their own idea of what yoga means. [Laughs and acts out such a person:] “Ah, naa, I—naa I don’t, I’ve got my own way of doing it, okay?” It’s kind of like a bit of an eye roll, and what can you do? I was down Mount Maunganui last weekend, and I was talking to them about—I was asked to speak on what is real meditation, so I used an example:

Everybody knows what a diamond is, and there are standards. It is something very specific, and there are different tests that you can do to establish whether a substance is a diamond or not, and then there are set standards to grade how valuable it is based on its clarity, on its colour and its cut. These are the three c’s that establish and give worth to a gem. And when you see an actual gem, when you see a diamond that’s worth 15 or 18 or 20 million US dollars it’s mind-boggling. The guy I used to be a partner with, he owned seven of the top 13 diamonds in the world. So I got to see lots of really interesting things, and it’s mind-blowing. But this idea that I can create my own standard for what is a diamond, and I’m going to take a piece of broken glass, and set it in a ring, and go, “See, I’ve got a beautiful diamond.” And it’s just like, No! [Laughs] You may think it’s a diamond but it’s not. It’s glass. It’s silica. It’s not the type of carbon structure that makes up a diamond. You can’t invent your own diamond just by your sheer willpower. That’s unrealistic. It doesn’t work that way.

And so the standards that they set out were for actually achieving this end goal, complete self-realization and God realization.

So speaking about this, Patanjali, in the second pada, or second chapter, of the Yoga Sutra, beginning from the 28th verse, he speaks about when a person has become increasingly purified. And I’ll just give you some—or try to aid: when we talk about purity here, we’re talking about a purity of consciousness, where you begin to actually see things with great clarity.

Just like this girl: she had adopted a certain lifestyle. She was in a certain state of consciousness that was killing her body and breaking her mind down, and then when she took that—she decided to kill herself, and said, okay, now she gave up worrying about what she’s going to eat, and went for a walk without the phone and all this kind of stuff, it was kind of like, oh my God! It really changed things for her. It’s a shift in consciousness. It’s not a spiritual shift. It’s just a shift away from craziness to more clarity. So these shifts in consciousness were referred to as becoming increasingly purified.

“When impurities are destroyed by practicing the eight limbs of yoga, enlightenment dawns, culminating in full knowledge of the self, or the atma.”

And now, speaking about those eight limbs of yoga, and this is the sadhana:

“Control of the senses (these are the yamas), observances of rules (the niyamas), bodily postures (or asana), regulation of the breath (pranayama), the withdrawal of the mind from sense objects (this is pratyahara), focusing the mind on a chosen object (dharana), bringing the mind into a singular focus meditation (dhyana), and complete absorption in trance (or samadhi), these are the eight limbs of yoga.”

And then explaining what were the yamas and niyamas, he goes on in the next verse:

“Non-violence…”

—and I would just like to say that ahimsa, or non-violence, is not just refraining from physically hurting someone. Even the way you dress can be violent. If you try to dress in a seductive and alluring way, male or female, trying to get people to place their minds and their love on you, you are hurting their real self-interest and plunging someone else into deep ignorance. And this, even this, was considered a form of violence. So non-violence is very broad, and it can be and should be and is applied to lots of different things.

“…truthfulness (satyam),”

—truthfulness, which is kind of gone by the wayside these days. People just: “Your truth, my truth,” whatever you want to believe becomes your truth.

“…not stealing,”

— to illegally, even subtly, to try and take money from people, or property, which is often what’s going on in the guise of commerce. Then there is,

“…celibacy,”

— to refrain from sexual engagement. This is how focused these people were. Today it’s like sexual activity has become God, and everybody is overly focused, and it’s just like, it doesn’t fulfill anyone. Anyway, we’ll deal with that another time. And,

“…freedom from possessiveness,”

— the claim of ownership of anything in this world, “Mine!” Just like I use the example, you buy a toy, a kid, it goes on a rampage and, “I want it. Please can you give it to me? I want it,” throwing a bit of a wobbly and wanting the, whatever it is, some toy. Then you give it to them, and they’re just like, “Oh, I’m so happy!” and they’re, “Rrrr,” whatever, playing around with it, good for maybe an hour or two or three. And then that’s it. Maybe next day a little bit, playing with it, and then not touching it again, and it’s just sitting over there forgotten about. And then one of the friends will come, or a cousin or someone, and they’ll go to play with it, then the kid’s response, “That’s mine! That’s mine!” All of a sudden it’s all important, even though it was utterly forgotten. You observe children, they haven’t learned how to hide things like older people do, how to become socially acceptable. But that tendency towards possessiveness is something very, very strong in all of us.

So these:

“… make up the yamas.”

“These laws are universal and must be practiced without consideration of time, place, birth or circumstances. And together they constitute the “great vow” of life.”

So anybody that was serious about following this spiritual path that was laid out by Patanjali did this.

And then the niyamas, or the observances, they are,

“…internal and external purity,”

So they would they were very careful about how they lived, what they came into contact with. It was pretty amazing. Next one is,

“…contentment,”

—to learn how to become content.

“…the acceptance of austerity,”

This was considered crucial. I mean you have this situation where everybody’s talking about resilience now, and people not having resilience. And it’s because they don’t know how to accept austerity and difficulty.

“…the recitation of sacred mantras and the study of Vedic texts, and complete devotion and surrender to God.”

Isvara pranadana, it is called. These were the observances, the niyamas.

So along with their other practices, these first two things, which contain really critical principles, this was what laid out what was called their sadhana. And it was embraced to achieve something of limitless value.

So I’ll just now read a little verse from the Brahma Samhita, and it states:

“The highest state of spiritual devotion, or realization, is attained by slow degrees by the method of constant endeavor for self-realization with the help of scriptural evidence, theistic conduct and perseverance in practice.”

This verse is just like, wow! It contains so much information, that if you want to achieve the highest attainment, embrace the fact that it will be achieved by slow degrees. Doesn’t have to be, but for the majority of us it will be slow. It’ll be one foot in front of the other, and “it is achieved in slow degrees by the constant endeavor for self-realization.” Constant! Every day it is part of your endeavor that you are embracing. And it is done with the help of what’s referenced here as scriptural evidence. These are the teachings contained in these spiritual guiding literatures.

It will also be attained—and requires theistic conduct. This is one of our spiritual masters from the early part of the last century who translated this way. His mastery of English was extraordinary. He was such a scholar. But theistic, or Godly, conduct was crucial. Your choice of how you interact with others, how you deal in relationships, how you deal with this world must be guided by high spiritual principle. And one needs perseverance in their practice.

So now looking at our situation and the time, place and circumstance in which we live, what is it, what are the essential components for sadhana, a process or practice that brings us to the highest attainment? The first and most essential or foundational practice is the immersion in that which is transcendental, and that means the frequent use of spiritual, or transcendental, sound. This is foundational to one’s practice.

There are different types of immersions, and I’m just going to quickly run through some things for people that may be somewhat new to things. The immersion in spiritual sound begins for most people with what we categorize as active listening. So I’m gonna just reference—in a little bit, I’ve got a few guided meditations that people could use to assist themself every day, and the first one of those that I would be recommending is the process of just relaxing and doing some simple breath work, and then just immersing your mind and your heart in spiritual sound as it is being chanted. You don’t have to do anything. You just have to actively listen, and it will have a really transformative effect.

The second stage is when a person now actively participates. And so generally we teach people the process of using breath, and then on the outward breath using a mantra like we do with a Gauranga mantra, where one chants aloud. So this is kind of stepping one step further from just lying back and being immersed, actively listening, to now engaging in the process of chanting.

In one of the guided meditations I do, we also teach people how to engage in japa. Japa is a process of where you use these beads in your meditation. Doesn’t matter what the size is. A normal string of beads will have about 108 beads, traditionally. This one has half that number, 54. And so there is a string of beads, and on the top there is what’s categorized as a head bead. And engaging the sense of touch, the soft murmuring of sound, and the sense of hearing, three of the senses have become engaged to help bring the mind into a deeper focus on this spiritual sound.

And then of course, kirtan, where people come together, on your own, or what’s called sankirtan, together, where we collectively chant. You have a leader and other people respond.

So it is through these activities that a person engages in what is the most essential and foundational practice in your sadhana, the immersion in spiritual sound.

Another thing that is of great importance is to hear from spiritual authority. So the three great spiritual authorities were called sastra, guru and sadhu.

Sastra were the spiritual texts that are considered to have descended from a spiritual platform, which guide us in life. The word sastra, the first part of it sas, it means—it actually means a command, a command not in the sense of trying to get you to do something you don’t want to do, and your mum’s shouting at you, “You have to do it.” No. It’s kind of like you ask somebody, “Uh excuse me, I’m looking for this particular place. Do I go down the road and I turn left?” and they go, “No ,no, no. You turn right, and it’ll be about 50 meters down there.” “Thank you very much.” And off I go. You’ve heard an authoritative statement. And so these texts were considered an authority on what should guide us.

A spiritual teacher, or guru, never deviates from sastra. He doesn’t wing it. He doesn’t make it up as he goes, which has become very common in the world in the last few decades, where so many people will pose as a spiritual teacher and, either to some degree or even to a very large degree, make stuff up as they go. The actual spiritual teachers never deviated from sastra.

And then the third word, sadhu, means the saintly persons who were exemplary in their life and their conduct, and who also taught in this way.

Then the next part of sadhana that’s important—so we’ve got immersion in spiritual sound, hearing from spiritual authority to keep you on track and focused, and integrating your practice into your life.

And I think one of the most wonderful verses that make that very apparent for everyone—so one of the, as I mentioned, this verse from the Bhagavad-gita where Krishna is speaking to Arjuna, and He states,

“Whatever you do, whatever you eat, and whatever you offer or give away, and whatever austerity you perform—do that O son of Kunti, as an offering to Me.”

This is the ultimate expression of what it means to live a spiritual life, where your entire life, your work, your relationships, everything becomes a spiritual offering. I’m not going to go any deeper than that. I think that’s pretty straightforward.

Then in that previous verse that we read from the Brahma Samhita, the reference to theistic conduct, that is an essential part of sadhana.

So just as a reminder we had—these are essential parts of developing a practice, a personal practice that you begin to apply in your life. You have immersion in transcendental sound. You have hearing from spiritual authority. This is known as sadhu-sanga, the association with those who are saintly. We learn by hearing and by observing their conduct, learning to integrate your life into your spiritual practice. And now the cultivation of theistic conduct.

There was one psychologist, he was also a clinical psychiatrist, and he said, even if somebody doesn’t believe in the existence of God one should act as if God exists. That was a pretty extraordinary thing for him to say. I was quite whoa! taken aback, and not expecting that one but that idea, that concept of living your life where you do feel that you are accountable, and you are accountable. The laws of karma are inescapable. As you sow so shall ye reap. I was actually thinking of doing a talk, You Are What You Tweet, like you are what you eat right? Or As You Tweet, So Shall You Reap. You can’t just say and do things and think it’s not going to have any effect on you, and it’s not going to lead you towards a certain goal or outcome.

And so in spiritual practice, people made this commitment. It was gradual, and it became stronger and more developed as time went by, where they made this decision. And theistic conduct, I think can be importantly summarized as to practice gratitude. No matter how crappy you think things are, there are always things that you should feel and express gratitude for. And it should be a big part of your life. It doesn’t mean all the time, but there should be, every day, some attempt to express gratitude.

To practice patience and tolerance, both of those things together are critical for your spiritual growth. To practice humility, and to show kindness…

So these things that I’ve gone over really constitute—and each person can develop their own practice and make that a focus of their life: the immersion in transcendental sound, hearing from spiritual authority, integrating your practice, your spiritual practice, into your life, and the cultivation of theistic conduct.

So I really recommend for people that want to make a start in these things who don’t have any grounding, I’m going to put a few links in the talk when I post it. It won’t show up on the live stream but I will be posting in the normal places on Facebook, on my Youtube channel and on my website.

A daily meditation is essential to sadhana, to building a spiritual life. And I really recommend that it begins—before you start, to sit or lie in a comfortable position, let go, breathe a little bit, and then from your heart to offer gratitude, gratitude for the fact that you are beginning or endeavoring on this path, gratitude for what it is that we have been shown, for spiritual truth and direction. And after doing that, then you can pop on one of the guided meditations.

So the easiest one, the one involving active listening, I’ve titled it as A Meditation For Well-Being It’s a very simple guided meditation. If somebody wants to—yeah well let me just correct that. I’ll give you a link to a whole series of meditations. And it’s on Soundcloud, so it’s just an audio thing that you can listen to. And the first one, as I mentioned, is A Meditation for Inner Peace and Well-Being, and this is where you practice active listening. Then there’s another one. The second one, it is involving the use of breath and the chanting of the Gauranga mantra. And then there is a guided meditation on how to practice japa, using beads, japa meditation. But even if you don’t have any of these beads—and I’ll just say—I mean in the older times sometimes they would even just take a cloth and tie knots in it, and then tie the end together, and they would use that for japa.

But the next meditation, it’s—I’ve called it My Meditation, and it involves a series of things, relaxation, some breathing, the use of a simple form of pranayama, nadi shodhan which is—the instruction is there. It’s very simple. And then going into Gauranga breathing, and then a Gauranga chant or singing. And then there is 54 mantras, like a half a set of beads, doing a very simple mantra that you can follow. And it closes with a kirtan. So that’s like about 20 minutes.

And if you learn to do this every day, and then to take those main principles, and begin to apply it in your life, practice will make perfect. You will attain spiritual perfection. You will come to recognize your own perfection as a spiritual being and the re-establishment of this connection with the ultimate spiritual truth, the Supreme Soul.

With that, thank you very, very much. Took a little bit longer than I thought it would, but really important stuff. Yeah? Thank you very much. So we’ll close out with a kirtan. I think I’ll chant the Aum Hari Aum mantra.